Behavioral Economics from a laymans perspective.

I have to lay out my motives for writing this piece. Some years ago I came across Liam Delaney an academic working in Scotland. Using twitter as the medium I argued and debated with a university professor about issues affecting the Irish economy and world society in general. In social terms our paths would probably never cross. Liam was usually talking to a Professor Vonprondsky of Dublin City University. In a voluntary unpaid capacity I had worked with Vonprondskys predecessor in Dublin City University on a regeneration project in Ballymun.


This was a locality with almost the highest levels of poverty in Europe. The community was extremely active, working to develop all the states services such as health and education, any area the community could become involved. In the area of property however the locality was made up of a completely state owned houses and apartments and the landlord (in this case the state) did not see itself as being in any way responsible for the economic development of the locality.

The people of Ballymun changed that mindset but it took many years and in fact 2 generations of people had to fight the state to bring about the changes in the mind of the landlord (the state).


A long time passed while the fight went on, and many activists that were never members of political parties found a natural home in the meeting rooms of trade unions. Those that had jobs with unionised employers used their positions to get community development issues on to the trade unions agendas. This brought access to information from other trade union members in varying shapes and forms.

In turn this process brought about a process called PARTNERSHIP. The ultimate aim was to bring about a common set of goals that citizens and employers could aspire to, and this would also bring about a change in attitude from the states public servants.

All in all the theory had it that PARTNERSHIP would work across all sectors of the country to benefit all. In the main Partnership brought about many changes for all, but the state elements of the agreements were never delivered in full.

In particular the failure of the state to provide proper decent quality housing provided the circumstances for the property bubbly that would eventually serve as the catalyst that bankrupted the country.

 Today there are many critics of PARTNERSHIP (including from myself) but in the main the criticisms are peoples perceptions that the trade unions have become corrupted as a result of the Partnership process. It seems that many think the trade union leaders were hob-nobbing it with senior politicians and senior civil servants for so long that they have become almost indistinguishable from each other.

This may be true, I think it certainly has some merit, however I also believe PARTNERSHIP (at least in theory) is a good thing. In practice however it has been a dismal failure, and in my opinion that failure can not be laid at the feet of ordinary people.

Ordinary people worked hard to make it a success, but the people at the top got fed up with it as soon the main political architect left the political stage in a blaze of shame. It seemed that civil and public servants had waited in the long grass to ambush the process. They held up everything they could hold up. Delayed anything that might bring about any real benefits to ordinary people. PARTNERSHIP would force the people at the top to work equally with the people from every walk of life, and it seems they were not going to let that happen.

They knew they would lose power (as they seen it) and there was no way they were ever really going to let that happen.

 Back to Vonprondsky. Dublin City University which is located in the area, was asked by the senior civil and public servants to provide an independent chairperson for the board of Ballymun regeneration limited. This was to be the company that would channel the funds to regenerate the area. This would eventually become the largest urban regeneration project in Europe, and at 1.5 billion euro, it certainly has reached that record.

Anyway the independent chairperson would have a sort of facilitating role with no executive powers whatsoever. Dublin City University nominated the head of the university DR Danny OHare to this position and in my opinion Danny OHare played this role superbly (at least for the time I was there).

As the first director nominated from the local community I sat on a board with many illustrious titles such as the City Architect, the City Engineer, and a few other fancy titles that I am not going to type out, but also the President of Dublin City University. In normal circumstances our paths would probably have never crossed. I found Danny OHare to be genuine and interested in what I had to say.

On a few occasions when the states agents were almost ridiculing my opinions Danny OHare used his role to put a stop to that carry on very quickly. You need to understand that almost everybody at the table had numerous degrees and salaries of over 100 thousand euro, while I was earning around 20 thousand euro and had left school early at 14 years of age in 1974. I was an unpaid Director also (just for the record). So you can see there was a huge gap in equality terms, and BTW, It was irish pounds at the time.

I found OHare to be reasonable but in particular I found him to be open and he dealt with me as an equal, and I felt very comfortable dealing with him. I would even say I trusted him.

 Vonprondsky took over from him at Dublin City University in a blaze of publicity. For a university president to be talking to the general public was fairly unique in Irish terms. Vonprondsky took to using social media for communications, and thats where I first came across him. I took to debating with him on a wide range of issues about Ballymun and other worldly ideals. So too, did many others, as clearly Vonprondsky was not toeing the high fallutin role of an aloof university academic.

Some of these debates included many other academics from around the world and sometimes they included me. Then Delaney, who I think was a colleague of Vonprondsky at some point also joined in the debates.

 Delaneys demeanour was very much like VonProndskys and also OHares, where the persons opinion was what mattered. The message was important and if Delaney could learn from any source, then he is very much open to that. Thats my opinion by the way.

 Anyway I have had numerous discussions with Delaney about economics in general.

 Most recently he is researching different aspects of economics, and the item that has brought me to writing this, is one of his current subjects Behavioural Economics.

 One of Delaneys tweets about NUDGE in behavioural economics attracted me to read some items on the subject. The first thing that struck me about it was that senior civil and public servants including university lecturers, professors and researchers were actually conducting experiments to learn about the subject. The main sources for this activity is the UK and the USA. At first I felt like a guinea pig or in american terms I think its referred to as a lab rat. Then I thought these people are being paid hundreds of thousands of euro of taxpayers money to “learn on the job”. Thats a nice job if you can get it.

PARTNERSHIP in theory was supposed to bridge that gap. By asking ordinary people to participate in the decision making processes at the very top and also at the very bottom was supposed to bring about this precise information, i.e. a way and a means to influence public policies and implementations that would work efficiently and would serve everybody in the objectives that were expected to happen.

As I said earlier, it seems the senior public servants never had any intention of allowing that to happen.

If that is correct then it strikes me that Delaneys work is almost doomed before it ever really gets off the ground, despite the facts that the early experiments clearly show NUDGE to be far more effective than Control.

Delaney tweeted “People like Duflo/Mullainathan mentioned and frequently have made point that poor as "irrational" as rich but with much worse consequences” and this is quite true in my opinion.

However the real problem lies under that statement.

As I said earlier ordinary people bought into the partnership process in a whole hearted and fully committed way. We believed when public servants told us this problem could not be overcome or that the other solution could not be legally implemented. Excuse after excuse was trotted out to justify sensible solutions to problems not being addressed. Basically public servants kept telling us why something could not happen as opposed to something actually happening. The public service agenda was always presented as a compromise and local agreement was usually sold as the best deal we could get, even though we knew in our hearts and minds that these compromises would never solve the problems.

We got on with the “public servants” and probably even felt that some of them had become our friends (maybe they did in some cases) but not in mine.

When we challenged our own people most of them found it hard to accept that we had been completely duped.

This is understandable because in working class terms admitting in public or private that someone had fooled you into believing something that would inevitably make things worse for your community would open you up to ridicule.

This would prove extremely hard to take, but would eventually end up as the conclusion we came to, granted it took a while, but it inevitably happened.

Some people would just walk away disillusioned. Some would keep the fight going. Some died.

But one thing never happened and most likely will never happen again. Ordinary people would never trust the public service again, at least not in my lifetime.

The amount of credibility that ordinary people put on trust and integrity is quite enormous.

Irish people spent decades living in poverty (note: technically the Irish republic is just over 75 years old). Irish people knew that and lived in the hope their children would not have to suffer the same poverty.

Most Irish people do not have private pensions mainly because we believed the state would provide us with a pension in our old age. We paid into a system of state insurance to cover this, and we never expected a huge pension (just enough to cover the basics would do), but mainly we suffered the hardship that poverty and dreadful working conditions brought, so that our children and grand children would never have to suffer the same.

Our suffering and hard work would develop the country to the place where we could hold our heads up proud and where our children could live reasonably decent lives.

Well, we know now that we were betrayed locally when we worked at developing local communities.

We know we were betrayed nationally when the public servants allowed our country to be bankrupted, so the rich could keep their wealth.

We know we were betrayed when the party of the people (the Irish labour party) participated in widespread cuts in public services, all across the classes.

Its quite annoying also, to know the betrayers are “learning on the job” and being paid very handsomely for the privilege.

 Lifelong committed trades unionists (like myself) and community development workers both paid and unpaid, have colleagues and friends in all walks of life, and I very much doubt that we would ever advocate getting into bed with the state again.

The trust that we gave the state workers, was thrown back in our faces and we most likely will never trust any of then again.

Maybe future generations can trust them, but only time will tell on that one. A wiser man than me in 1987 when we advocated PARTNERSHIP told me, “when you lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas”. That statement would eventually be proved true.

Trades unions and community development activities are closely linked all over the world and many academic studies have taken place in Ireland. Most will never be published but they are shared widely informally through personal contacts. Almost all of the studies come to the same conclusion. Working with the state and employers at the highest level is not something that any of the groups will ever again undertake lightly, and in the unlikely scenario that it would come about, the rules would be agreed and probably (metaphorically) signed in blood prior to any co-operations.

This is why I am writing this piece, and its only to Delaney that I think it might actually have any relevance.

I believe as an open minded academic he will bear this in mind when considering his work on behavioural economics.

 My conclusion is the public servants that are working to try to change the public mindset, should in fact be concentrating on changing the mindset of the “public servants”.

 Senior Public servants all over the world have lost all credibility in the minds of the people.

Thats where the real problem lies.